'The Monocled Mutineer'

[Kathie]

Cakme across a film - BBC - eight episode series - on DVD this week. it is the story of the amoral but charming Percy Topliss who grew up in very strightened circumstances somewhere near York (I thinki) and then enlisted and was with the RAMC. Whilst at Etaples he came across deserters living in scanctuaires in the woods nearby. He returned to the lines and then went back to the deserters. a muotiny at Etaples and quite a lot of mayhem saw Percy centrally involved. He evaded a search, got back to the UK, was still being searched for even after the Armistice, joined up as a way of making some balck market mo ney and being in hiding but then was involved in someone elses murder and eventually hunted down and shot.

On the DVD jacket is the rather intriguing publicity note that this series was shown on the BBC once and then never again - the contents being too challenging or horrifying for the stablishement to take. Or something like that.

Does anyone know anything about the film and whether it really was withdrawn for political rasons?

It cerytainly shows a lot of brutal officers and MPs at Etaples - and some stupid officers - but thats nothing new. It also shows the Etaples 'mutiny' - but I thought that did happen.

So does anyone think this really was an unpopular film or was that just publicity.

Kathie

[Jim_Grundy]

Kathie

The film mixed quite a lot of fact and with a whole lot of fiction. The mutiny at Etaples and the reasons behind it might have been represented reasonably accurately but it is certain that Percy Toplis wasn't even there.

He doesn't seem to have been much more than a crook who was far from a working class hero fighting against the horror of the war. He visited my home town in September 1918 defrauding a jeweller by buying a gold watch in one of his officer disguises with a stolen cheque book and that seems to be the sum total of the man.

No hero as far as I, at least, am concerned. The men who weren't in prison at the start of the war and weren't involved in selling petrol on the black market in a cushy job at its end in Nottinghamshire in 1918 are more worthy of our respect.

Regards,

Jim

[AlanCurragh]

Kathie - the link below will take you to a long, but very interesting article about the impact the series had at the BBC

Alan

http://www.offthetelly.co.uk/drama/bleasdale/mutineer.htm

[Moonraker]

Another very popular topic within this Forum, which we've discussed several times before, together with the Etaples mutiny. I think that the blurb on the DVD jacket was just "publicity". The film did glamorise Toplis, but then many villains in history have been presented kindly to modern audiences (Dick Turpin, Billy the Kid, the James Brothers, Ned Kelly - oh dear, I've started a list, and I hope it won't be added to, otherwise we'll stray off-topic.) I can't recall anything in the film or in the book that would have shocked the Establishment.

Moonraker

[David Filsell]

Bleasdale justified his blatant story telling (as opposed to factual recreation) as providing " a greater truth". The series was riddled with errors from start to finish. He is I think a writer with a clear political agenda, to which of course he is fully entitled. He is now working on another military series. Worrying really

[Mark Hone]

The series' original Historical adviser, Julian Puttkowski, (THE expert of WWI British mutinies) dissociated himself from the final product because of the inaccuracies. He explained his decision in an article of the WFA magazine 'Stand To', which unfortunately I do not have to hand.

[nigelcave]

If I remember correctly, the thing that I recall was BBC publicity's attempt to portray the series as historically accurate - which it was not, at least for much of the significant detail; and then compounding the error by continuing to argue its historical accuracy, when there had been plenty of evidence produced to the contrary, not least by John P.

[truthergw]

My parents remembered the Toplis affair well. That is, from the newspaper accounts. The thing that struck the public was that he was shot. Use of firearms by police was extremely rare. It was easy to form conspiracy theories around that. Why was he shot? It was open to all to put forward their own suggestion. From the little I know, he was a crook and a thoroughly unscrupulous one at that.

[Alans]

I thought he was quite handy with a gun and shot people?

Alan

[jay dubaya]

I believe he shot 2 gamekeepers who found him hiding in a lodge in Scotland somewhere,

Jon

[Alans]

I believe he shot 2 gamekeepers who found him hiding in a lodge in Scotland somewhere,

Jon

Thats one back for the animals

[truthergw]

Do you really believe that?

[jay dubaya]

Which bit are you referring too Tom?

Jon

[George Armstrong Custer]

At a guess I'd say he was referring to 'Alans''offbeat observations, Jon.

[Andrew Hesketh]

He was well known in Blackwell, Derbyshire, a neighbouring village to the one that I am researching (Tibshelf, see below).

Basically he was a young criminal - the sort that would have had Crimean war veterans bemoaning the youth of today - nasty, vicious and self-centred.

The BBC drama is mostly fictional (based on a true story would be an apt description) and the book that lay behind it is also riddled with factual errorrs.

My Grandmother knew him!!

[jay dubaya]

Is his grave still unmarked?

[truthergw]

Which bit are you referring too Tom?

Jon

The post above mine Jon.

[jay dubaya]

That's alright then Tom

Jon

[zippy.72]

He was well known in Blackwell, Derbyshire, a neighbouring village to the one that I am researching (Tibshelf, see below).

Basically he was a young criminal - the sort that would have had Crimean war veterans bemoaning the youth of today - nasty, vicious and self-centred.

The BBC drama is mostly fictional (based on a true story would be an apt description) and the book that lay behind it is also riddled with factual errorrs.

My Grandmother knew him!!

I used to play cricket for Blackwell and recall that he had some connection to the club/miner's welfare sports ground. Do you know any more about this aspect of his life?

[jay dubaya]

He was taken in by an aunt who lived in the shadow of the pit at Blackwell, he was schooled at South Normanton Elementary School and later became an apprentice in the smithy at Blackwell.

Jon

[Staffsyeoman]

The article Magic Rat points us at is outstanding, and stirred a few memories. I thought it was a cracking bit of telly, McGann was superbly cast, anything with Cheri Lunghi in it immediately leaps up the 'goodometer' for me, and great pains seem to have been taken to make it at least look right.

But arguments about 'a greater truth' - like patriotism famously being the last refuge of a scoundrel, this is the first (and last?) line of defence of those writing on matters historical who have found it a terrible inconvenience to let the facts get in the way of a good story.

And as we've noted in many other threads, that square box in the corner can be a confounded nuisance in setting the bar for the popular conception. Percy Toplis led the Etaples Mutiny, it was on the telly. "OK, so you got me. He wasn't even within a hundred miles. But I have used him as a prism for brutality, waste, up the workers against the ruling classes." Yes, Mr Bleasdale, but think of all that has to be unravelled to find 'truth' in all this, your self-appointed 'greater' version, or the closer proximity of the nasty, murderous, venal, self-serving creature Toplis was. Bad choice for a working class hero, Bleasdale.

[Andrew Hesketh]

I used to play cricket for Blackwell and recall that he had some connection to the club/miner's welfare sports ground. Do you know any more about this aspect of his life?

The film portrays a true event when, whilst home masquerading as an Officer, he paraded local volunteers and put them through their paces. This took place on the miner's welfare cricket ground in Blackwell. The film shows it as as dirty slag-heap of a park, but in reality it was first class and actually hosted Derbyshire CCC on occasions in the Edwardian era.

[Staffsyeoman]

The film portrays a true event when, whilst home masquerading as an Officer, he paraded local volunteers and put them through their paces. This took place on the miner's welfare cricket ground in Blackwell. The film shows it as as dirty slag-heap of a park, but in reality it was first class and actually hosted Derbyshire CCC on occasions in the Edwardian era.

Ahh... but without wanting to labour my point too much.. how very much better to serve the agenda than to have it

in the shadow of the pit, the working class hero humiliating the bosses in the shadow of the source of their ill-gotten wealth (cont. p94). A nice green park (probably established with help from a wealthy benefactor, our local park in Birmingham was) doesn't serve this elusive and subjective "greater truth"...